The continuing saga of writing a novel while attempting to raise 4 children and stay happily married and stay focused on God...

Thursday, August 16, 2007

I was one of those kids growing up who was always begging her parents for a horse. Unfortunately, I was a city kid (downtown Buffalo, NY), and it just wasn't practical to keep a horse in the backyard or at the expensive city stables. But, I did get riding lessons, and finally when I was 22 I was able to buy a horse of my very own, Rebel. I still have him, in fact, and I consider myself very lucky because over the years Rebel has been transported from his native New York to South Carolina, then to Wyoming, to South Dakota, and finally back to Wyoming. He is very old now (27 years) but he is still my favorite horse to ride.

He is a small mixed-breed, probabably mostly Quarter Horse, but some people have said he looks like he has some Morgan in him, and other people have asked me if he is a Mustang. He is only 14 hands tall, a beautiful golden bay color, and true to his name, he has a bit of stubborn streak in him.

Here's a picture of Rebel from 2006, with two of my daughters and two of their cousins... he's a great kids' horse.

I grew up riding English and showing in hunter classes, transitioning to dressage and eventing in my twenties. I haven't shown since I got married in 1999, but absolutely one of my most favorite things to do is trail-riding, which I can do a lot of since we moved to a house on the edge of town, with lots of open space. Now I'm transitioning again due to my husband and daughters' interest in Western sports like team roping, barrel racing, and Western pleasure. Here's a video of Blaze chasing cows (February, 2009)

A couple years ago I bought a yearling filly here in Wyoming, and I named her after a fictional horse, Jewel, in one of my favorite books, Mary O'Hara's "Green Grass of Wyoming" (a sequel to her famous "My Friend Flicka").

Jewel looks a lot like Rebel - same bay, same size - but she actually is a genuine Wyoming Mustang. She was completely wild when I got her and was a lot of fun gentling her and training her.

Here's picture of her, from 2007, with my stepdaughter, who helped train her.

My husband also loves horses. He started out as a bareback bronc rider in high school rodeo, but he's currently into team-roping and penning. He likes to train young horses and then sell them as finished ropers (he's sold three so far and we have another one ready to sell) but there's one horse, Ally, that he's getting really attached too - it's going to be hard to sell her, especially since she's really good with the kids, too.